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Roach: Pacquiao badly wants the Marquez rematch

By Chris Williams: Trainer Freddie Roach says that Manny Pacquiao can’t wait to get in the ring with Juan Manuel Marquez again to try and avenge his 6th round knockout loss from last December in Las Vegas, Nevada. Roach says he’d like to see Pacquiao and Marquez face each other in Mexico if the fight gets made this September.

Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum wants the fight to be staged in Macao, his first choice, or Singapore in order to avoid the 39.6% tax rate that Pacquiao would have to pay for the loot that he gets from U.S boxing fans in pay-per-view.

Roach said to Philstar.com “Manny wants a rematch more than anything else. That’s the fight I want. It’s still the biggest fight out there. I want the last fight in Mexico. That’s my dream.”

Last fight? What is Roach talking about? Does he honestly think Arum will stop matching Pacquiao up against Marquez if their proposed September fight brings in tons of good cash? No way. Arum will keep this thing going until one of them says no or the interest in fight dies down to where it’s bringing in less than 800,000 PPV buys.

It would likely have to drop off a dramatic amount for Arum to stop putting them back in with one another because he doesn’t have any other big name fighters in his Top Rank stable. Brandon Rios was just beaten and Mike Alvarado and Tim Bradley aren’t PPV fighters, and neither is Rios.

If Arum puts any of those guys in with Pacquiao he’ll be lucky to attract 800,000 buys, although I have a funny feeling we’d never find out what the final PPV numbers would be. I could see it being something that is an unknown.

Marquez is pretty much the only game in town for Pacquiao and Arum unless wants to finally put in a strong effort to make the Pacquiao vs. Floyd Mayweather Jr. fight without talking about outdoor stadiums, Pacquiao having a cut that’s not healing or Arum not knowing who to contact in Mayweather’s team to start the negotiation process.

I don’t blame Pacquiao for wanting another fight with Marquez because it must have been bad for Pacquiao to face all of his Filipino fans at home in the Philippines after being knocked clean out by Marquez last December. However, Pacquiao needs to cut his losses and realize he never was as good as Marquez in their four fights and he deserved to lose all four of them and got incredibly lucky in getting two highly controversial decisions and a draw. Pacquiao is getting older now, and he’s more easier to hit than he was when he was younger.

Marquez is aging too, but he’s improved his power to where he can hurt Pacquiao each time he hits him hard. A fifth fight will be the same as the fourth fight with Marquez likely knocking Pacquiao down each time he connects with a hard right hand to the hand. Pacquiao needs to forget about Marquez and focus on fighting Arum’s other Top Rank stable fighters because those guys are a little safer for him, although I think Mike Alvarado would knock Pacquiao out at this point.